Twisting in the Wind
by Tammany Tiger
Summary: Speculative backstory for Mycroft, Sherlock, and their family. Redbeard. Mummy is clever; Father is wise. Dysfunctional families, loving families, brothers.


"Look at him," Mummy crooned, "isn't he perfect?"

"God, he's gorgeous," Aunt Trish said, her voice hushed. "Oh, Em, love, he's beautiful."

Mycroft, sitting in "his" place, hidden between the end of the sofa and the wall, leaned back on the dense cotton velveteen upholstery with the puppy on his belly. He didn't think the new baby was all that perfect. He was skinny and pale and his head was a funny shape and he was so loud! Red had stopped bawling after only three nights. William—or Sherlock—or Scott—or whatever they were going to settle on calling him-had been home for three months and he still cried and cried and cried.

"Sherlock," he whispered to Red, stoking the satiny ears. Sherlock sounded like the name for someone who cried all the time.

"He's so outgoing, too," Mummy said. "Always alert and busy."

"Grabby," Mycroft whispered. "Loud."

Red thumped his tail, and Mycroft held him tighter. He loved the pup. Father had brought him home a week after Will…Sherlock came home. "You've been a good boy," he'd said softly to Mycroft. "It's not easy being the big brother, is it?" He sat by Mycroft in the back garden, on the worn bench—the wood silvery with age. He didn't mind when Mycroft didn't answer, just held the dog tight. Mummy expected answers—the first thing she wanted to know was what people said. Father expected actions—he wanted to know what people did.

"Smart, too," Mummy said to Aunt Trish, sounding smug. "Already babbling. He'll be talking in no time."

Mycroft hadn't spoken his first word for almost two years. Of course, once he did, he was speaking full sentences, but Mummy never seemed to remember that bit.

"Months," she said to Trish. "I waited months and months with Mikey, and not a word. Not a squeak. We tested him for deafness. We had his vocal chords checked. IQ tests." She sighed. "I keep trying to remind myself that not every baby can be brilliant, but… Do you know what his first words were?"

"Wasn't it something about porridge?"

"Yes. I was trying to get him to eat some lovely toast and marmalade, and he said, 'No, Mummy, I prefer porridge.'" Mycroft didn't have to see her face to know she rolled her eyes. She always rolled her eyes when she told this story. "Poor, dear Mycroft. He's a porridge sort of boy, I'm afraid. But you," she crooned over the new child, "You're going to be marmalade all the way, aren't you, Sherlock?"

Sherlock sounded like the right name for a baby who liked marmalade, Mycroft thought. At least, the kind of marmalade Mummy liked. She always got the kind with big, creepy lumps of rind in it, almost threatening in their blanket of dark, bitter jam. Mycroft liked Rose's Lime, or Robertson's Silver Shred, like Gran served. He never had to work up spit to swallow down the dense, nasty lumps.

Porridge, Mycroft thought, was soothing. It was very hard to dislike porridge, especially if you added a bit of cream from Mummy and Father's coffee creamer and a drizzle of honey or Lyle's Golden Syrup. It was a bit slithery, but it went down without catching on the way and making you want to throw up before you'd even brushed your teeth for the morning.

Above, Sherlock was making all sorts of sounds: squeals and honks and a sort of bup-bup-bup like an outboard motor. Mummy and Aunt Trish were thrilled. If he'd known what a difference a bit of noise made, Mycroft thought resentfully, he'd probably have made noise sooner.

"He's going to be smart, this one," Mummy said, firmly. "And it all works out, after all. Mycroft for Father, and Sherlock for me."

She didn't mention The Other. The Other didn't count, though. Mycroft had worked that out long ago. The Other was the first, and the oldest, and almost as smart as Mummy. But she was a girl, and Mummy herself said that there was really not much point to girls being smart. It didn't matter how they worked at it, or how clever they were, no one counted them until they got married and had babies. Mummy said she'd learned that the hard way, and she just hoped The Other listened to her before she ruined her life trying to beat the system. "It's the Old Boy's Network," Mummy growled. "Fighting it is a waste of time. So much better to have boys and raise them to take over the world."

The Other had snorted when Mummy said that. She'd leaned over and whispered to Mycroft, "Bollocks. She's just trying to make up excuses for quitting when she ran into a bit of resistance."

Mycroft had been five at the time, and rather proud of understanding what The Other meant. Mummy didn't like resistance much, and didn't put up with much of it in her own home. It was always easier to just go along with Mummy, and do what you could to make her latest ideas work, than to fight her. Even Father said so, laughing as he did. Father called Mummy "a force of nature."

The Other called her an interfering old bag, or she had before she ran off to stay with Gran before going to uni.

Mycroft called her Mummy, and tried to keep his head down.

"Mikey," Mummy called, suddenly.

"Here, Mummy," Mycroft said, from his hiding place. He could feel the sofa jog as she jumped in surprise.

"Don't lurk, Mikey. It's not polite. Do you know where Red is?"

"Here with me."

"Oh, good. We're going to take Sherlock and the puppy out into the garden, love. Sherlock likes Red."

Sherlock did like Red. That was part of why Mycroft tended to hide with the dog. Sherlock got grabby, and pulled on the puppy's ears and lips, and snatched at his eyes.

"Sherlock's not big enough to play with Red," he said, feeling bold. "But I can play with blocks with him."

"Mikey, don't argue. Do what Mummy asks."

Mummy didn't ask—not really-but Mycroft had already learned not to point that out. He sighed, and got up, putting Red down. He trailed after Mummy and Aunt Trish, and tried not to say anything when Aunt Trish said, "I always did think a boy needs a dog." After all, he was pretty sure the "boy" Aunt Trish meant wasn't Mycroft.

oOo

Mycroft was nineteen when they got the news about Redbeard...as Sherlock had rechristened the dog two years previously. Mycroft was home from uni with his first degrees—lingusitics and game theory—and trying to decide what to do next. MI6 didn't want him on a full-time basis until he came of age, and in the two years remaining until that time it seemed silly not to pick up an advanced degree or two. Mummy wanted him to go into forensic accounting. She'd realized years before that Mycroft was the smart one, but as she was quick to point out, he was "really a very porridge sort of person." Sherlock was the artistic one. Mycroft was the practical one, and Mummy felt strongly that forensic accounting would be a practical choice for her porridge son.

Mycroft was practical, of course. As Father said, sometimes, "Someone has to be, you know." Father wasn't smart—not like Mummy. But he did get the bills paid on time. Mycroft had learned there was a certain dignity to that.

"Your Mummy's a special woman," Father had said one afternoon when Mycoft was ten. He'd shone with his love. "But she's not the sensible sort." He'd smiled shyly at Mycroft. "We take care of them, don't we, Mike? Sherlock and Mummy—they'll always be the special ones. But we keep an eye on them."

"What about The Other?" Mycroft asked. He was, after all, the sensible one, and he didn't lose track of family members easily.

Father had sighed. "She takes care of herself, Mike," he answered. "I suppose she got it all. Brains and common sense and all that drama on top of it. The doctors say she's doing better, now."

When Mycroft came back from uni he took one look at Red…or, no, Redbeard, now…and felt his stomach flip. The old dog was too lean, and when he heard Mycroft come in the door his hindquarters wobbled and gave way twice before he was able to rise and race down the hall, tail wagging.

"He's not well," Mycroft said later, over dinner. "Have you taken him to the vet?"

"Mummy says he's just achy," Sherlock announced, angrily, his curls bobbing as he tossed his head.

"It would still be a good idea to get him checked," Mycroft said, diplomatically. "I'll make an appointment for him tomorrow."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Boooooring. Come play pirates with me."

Mycroft played pirates for the rest of the evening, but in the morning he called and made an appointment to have Red checked.

"Looks like advanced renal failure," the vet said, at the end of the appointment. "Leave him overnight and we'll run some tests, but the prognosis isn't good."

Mycroft set his jaw. "Your recommendation if you're right?"

The vet shrugged. "There are things we could do for a little while to stretch it out for the old lad. But I… it's up to you, of course. But he's had a good innings."

Mycroft nodded. "I'll call in the morning for news," he said, and went home to tell the family.

"Mike, you've upset your brother," Mummy said in irritation, shouting over Sherlock's shrieks coming down from his upstairs bedroom. "Is it too much to ask for you to come home and not set the household on its head?"

"He's my dog," Mycroft said, though in truth Red had been reassigned to Sherlock long since, as had Mycroft's telescope, Mycroft's comic book collection, Mycroft's favorite sweater, which he admitted no longer fit but which he'd honestly have preferred not to see covered with chemical stains and left unmended in a heap on Sherlock's floor. Sherlock had a tendency to need things passionately, and much of what he needed was technically Mycroft's. What he couldn't achieve by direct imitation or stealth he often got by whining. The rest Mummy just seemed to reassign to Sherlock automatically, as tribute to her difficult, complicated youngest son's primacy. Mycroft wasn't surprised when Mummy sniffed at his claim.

"He's the family dog," she said. "Don't give yourself airs, Mikey." The day in the garden all those years ago, with Mycroft and Father sitting on the silvery bench and Mycroft's very own puppy gruddling at their feet, might as well never have happened.

"He's dying," he said, fiercely. "Advanced kidney failure. No one had even taken him to the vet."

"He was an old dog," Father said, apologetically. "I'm sorry, son, I really didn't realize."

Of course he hadn't realized, Mycroft thought in frustration. Father might be the practical one, but he lived inside the Mummy-Sherlock fantasy zone, where their odd priority rankings trumped reality hands down. If Mummy and Sherlock said Red…Redbeard…no, Red was just achy, then he was just achy, after all.

"The vet will know for sure by tomorrow," Mycroft said, "but it doesn't look promising. If he is right, then I'm afraid it's time to do the right thing by him and put him down."

"Don't be presumptuous, Mike. That's not your decision to make."

Mycroft took a deep breath, and for the first time ever he simply defied Mummy. "Yes, it is. He is my dog, mother. We all love him, and I know Sherlock will hate it, but no matter how you rewrite things, he's my dog, and my responsibility…and I won't let Sherlock screaming stop me from doing the right thing for Red."

"Redbeard."

"Red." He walked out to the back garden.

The old, silver bench had been replaced long ago—so long ago that the new bench was old and silver now, too. Mycroft sat heavily. There was a lilac in bloom by the back gate, the lush scent filling the air.

Sherlock materialized at his elbow, blue eyes swollen and rimmed with red, nose red and glistening, hair a wild mess. Mycroft wanted to hug him, even though Mycroft wasn't, in his own opinion, very good at hugs. He was all long arms and elbows and when he was sitting his knees somehow seemed to get in the way. He suspected hugging him was like hugging a horrible mutant grasshopper, the sort of thing you'd find in a bad B-rated science-fiction monster movie.

"I'm going to go over to the vet office and steal Redbeard so you can't kill him," he said, his voice croaking and hoarse.

"Sherlock, he's dying," Mycroft said, sadly. "He's hurting."

"You're just jealous," Sherlock said. "He loves me best."

Mycroft was jealous, and sometimes—rarely—he could admit it to himself. He was jealous of Sherlock's annoyingly good looks, and of Mummy's fascination with her more temperamental, difficult younger son. He was jealous of Sherlock's amazing, prodigal talent with the violin—the boy had been put in Suzuki classes in early childhood, back in the day when Mummy still thought Mycroft was the stupid one, and his blazing talent had only prolonged that period. He was jealous of the way the world seemed to automatically turn to hand Sherlock gifts undeserved—though often demanded in a loud voice. He wasn't jealous of this, though: Red loved Sherlock, but Mycroft had seen the old dog's head rise, his eyes light, his tail start wagging the minute the door opened and he heard Mycroft's voice.

"He's my dog," he said, simply. "It's my job to take care of this."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "I won't let you kill Redbeard."

"He's dying, brother-mine. He's in pain. He's got…" Mycroft swallowed and fixed his eyes on the lilac tree, finding the inner quiet that had been his hallmark from birth. "He's got to be put down, Sherlock. It's the only merciful thing to do."

Sherlock hit him—a hard, straight punch in the arm. "I hate you."

Mycroft shrugged. "I'm sorry. But it doesn't change things."

Sherlock punched again. "You're my enemy."

"If I must be."

"My archenemy."

In the morning Mycroft went to Sherlock's room after the phone call. "I'm sorry, Sherlock. I talked to the vet. It's worse than they thought. It's… I'm going over, now. Do you want to come with me? To be with Red…beard. When it's done?"

"No." Sherlock huddled in his bed, eyes a blaze of fury. "I'll hate you forever, Mike. This is all your fault."

"Sherlock…" Mycroft sighed. "You don't think he'll feel better with you there?"

"What difference does it make? You're killing him anyway."

Mycroft nodded. "As you wish, then. If you change your mind before I go, just let me know."

He went back to his room to dress. He didn't know why it mattered, but for some reason he reached for his one good suit—a dark charcoal pinstripe he'd worn to talk to the MI6 recruiter, to try to look a bit older. He pulled out his one good white oxford dress shirt, stole a dark green paisley tie from his father's closet, put on his black dress shoes. It felt like armor.

It felt like no armor at all—or not enough to shield him from the day's assault.

"I'm about to go, Sherlock. Do you want to come with me?"

"I hate you!"

"As you will."

His heart broke when he walked into the vet's office and Red looked up, expectant. It broke when the old dog licked his hand, sighed against his belly, then looked around bewildered for the other brother, the other companion. It broke when the vet came in with the syringe. It broke when he wrapped his arms around the big red beast and nodded to the vet.

It broke when his own dog, his puppy, sighed, and closed his eyes, and died.

"We can arrange to bury him," the vet said.

"No, I'll take him home," Mycroft said.

He buried the dog in the back garden, under the lilac. Sherlock refused to help. Mother refused to talk about it, muttering, "If you're going to go rearranging everyone's lives with never so much as a polite request first, don't go looking at me for comfort. Meddling isn't a pretty trait, Mike. People don't much like to be interfered with."

Father came and helped dig.

"He was dying," Mycroft said. He'd changed out of his suit, and for the first time felt more naked in "ordinary" clothes than in formal wear. His forelock clung damply to his forehead. "He was in pain."

"I'm so sorry I missed it," Father said.

"It's not your fault," Mycroft said. "He was my dog. I should have thought. I knew how old he was."

"He had a good life," Father said.

"Is Sherlock still crying?"

"No. From the sounds of it he's hammering Legos to bits."

"Experiments?"

"Well… experiments in self-expression." Father heaved a shovel of earth to one side. "He's a hard one, that child. He thinks the world of you, you know. Tries to be you."

"I always did think he was a bit stupid," Mycroft said. "Of all the people to try to be like…"

"Mike…Mycroft, don't tease him about being stupid. I think he's trying to be as smart as you are."

Mycroft stopped shoveling, wiping his hair off his face with the back of his arm. "He can't," he said, bewildered. "It doesn't work that way. I mean, he can learn the techniques. I spent hours teaching him the techniques when we were littler, when I first realized I wasn't the dumb one. The techniques aren't all of it, though…"

"Neither of you is 'the dumb one,'" Father said. "My…Mycroft. He's changed since you left. He's determined he's going to take his A-Levels early, the way you and… the way you did. He's set on chemistry at Cambridge. He's trying to pick up Mandarin. He wants to be you." He looked sadly over at the cotton sheet that hid Red's body. "Half of why he loved Red was he was yours."

"So he tried to take him over," Mycroft said, angry again.

"He's not good at sharing," Father conceded. "Most of us aren't. Just…try to understand."

Mycroft put his foot to the lip of the shovel blade and cut deep into the earth, slicing through tendrils of root.

Father sighed again. "Just think about it, Mike."

"Mycroft."

"Mycroft."

"Do you think the hole's deep enough?"

Father said, "You've dug a deep enough hole to bury a dog. Nothing's deep enough to bury a heart, Mike."

They covered Red over, and lapped the turf back over the grave. Mycroft wasn't surprised to go out the next morning to find a board with a Jolly Roger drawn on it in felt pen, with the name "Redbeard" underneath, serving as a headstone.

oOo

Sherlock had been back for almost a year—half a year since he'd killed Charles Augustus Magnussen. Mummy had invited the Watsons to dinner, so she could see the new baby. Sherlock, of course, was invited, and if Sherlock and the Watsons were invited, Mummy decided that Mycroft had to come, too.

"You're so difficult, Mikey," she said. "Come show willing, for once."

When it came to Mummy, Mycroft still, for the most part, just tried to stay quiet and keep his head down. Forty-some years, accomplishments that would make most mothers cheer, a life that, barring a bit of fuss over orientation, should have been profoundly satisfying to any parent—and, yet, Mycroft thought, to his mother he was still the problematic child—as bright or brighter than she had been, as successful as she could have dreamed, but always, in the end, the quiet one, more like his father than like her. An eternal mystery…and Mummy, unlike Sherlock, did not much like mysteries.

So there he was, at Mummy and Daddy's place. Mummy was crooning over the Watson girl, still mad for babies. She always would be, he thought, refusing to consider he might be a bit succeptible himself.

"Oh, she's perfect," Mummy said. "Look at her. So blonde! And those eyes—like cornflowers. So very blue. Mycroft's were always grey-blue, like storm clouds. And Sherlock's, well—they're that magic changeable blue you get sometimes. Blue now, gray tomorrow, green when the light's just right. So much nicer than grey, I always thought."

They murmured politely. Mummy, predictably, got out the old albums. The Watsons were, Mycroft thought, far too willing to indulge her.

He supposed, given the peculiar relationship forged between the married couple and Sherlock, that it wasn't really that unusual that they wanted to drool over Sherlock's baby pictures. Not that anyone was saying anything outright, but Mycroft had heard about Sherlock's wedding "vow," and he'd eventually worked out the grotesque, almost rococo intricacy of the events leading up to Sherlock's murder of CAM.

He wondered what Mummy would think of the Watsons if she realized that her favored son was unlikely to ever give her grandchildren because he was, so near as Mycroft could determine, the platonic third member of a poly marriage which John Watson refused to recognize was a poly marriage, and which Sherlock and Mary refused to explain, because, well…

John Watson didn't want to know, and Sherlock and Mary would never make him.

He'd found Mary Morstan much easier to understand than Mary Watson. He'd given her sanctuary because of that understanding. He'd set her to guard John Watson because he knew just how skilled she was.

Love and Sherlock and CAM and motherhood had changed all that. Now she was an utter mystery to Mycroft.

He excused himself from the love-fest and the crooning over the baby pictures, and went out to the back garden.

They were, he saw, on—what? The fifth replacement bench? It was new, the wood a vivid russet-brown, bright as Redbeard's coat. The grave was long since lost, the soil settled, the turf healed, the plank headboard rotted away. The East Wind came for everything, in the end.

He remembered telling Sherlock those stories on winter nights, the shadows long, both of them quivering from the thrill of fear. It had been a wonderful, weird, sick pleasure. Sherlock would nag and nag and nag, pestering endlessly to be told a story—a scary story, an exciting story! In the end Mycroft would give in, annoyed, his studies interrupted, but unable to withstand Sherlock forever. They'd curl up together on Mycroft's bed, and Mycroft would switch off the lights and start the tale…

"The winds, you know, Sherlock, are everywhere. There's no corner of the world they don't reach—not one bit of moving air not touched by them. Your breath itself is wind, and it whispers to its brothers, telling them where you are, telling them everything you do, everything you say. The winds know everything, and they keep track…"

He had no talent of his own, he thought—not like Sherlock's music. All he had were words. He supposed if he had wanted to be a writer, it might have counted as talent, or art, but he simply loved the way words locked together, the way they created walls and knocked walls down, the way they could be arranged in elegant, intricate patterns of meaning. Numbers were pristine—words were lush and ripe and complicated, and just a little bit filthy, if you thought too much about it. Mycroft loved both. Words had come to serve him well, in the years since he'd first joined MI6. Words in English, words in any of dozens of other languages he could slip into. Diplomatic words. Authoritative words. Words on paper, defining treaties, determining trade pacts. Words flowing like electron winds from computer to computer—over the wires, over the wireless.

Some people called Mycroft a spider. If so, he was a spider perched in the center of a web of shining, shimmering words.

Then, though, there had been only Sherlock, caught between rapture and terror, huddled on the bed, arms wrapped around his knees, eyes shining with the light from the streets outside. Sherlock loved an audience…the years proved that. A drama queen, John Watson had apparently called him. It was true. But for Mycroft the magic had always been the magic of two: one to weave the words, one to listen.

"The North Wind is the king of the winds. He sits in his halls of ice and listens in the silence, weighing every word, measuring every action, all the breezes tell him everything that happens everywhere. The south wind: she's queen. She flows around the equator, and she's kind and a bit simple. She's not the smartest of the winds, and she can have a terrible temper. The West Wind is the spring wind, and she brings hope. But the East Wind, Sherlock…" Mycroft had made his voice shiver, and had leaned closer. "The East Wind is the death wind. The hunter's wind. It knows everything the North Wind knows, and it seeks out secrets. It's a deducer's wind. Nothing can hide from it, and nothing can escape it. It knows what you do—everything you do—and it judges, Sherlock. It judges you. If you're mean, it knows. If you steal, it knows." Mycroft watched Sherlock shiver, and thought a bit smugly of Sherlock telling Mummy she shouldn't let Mycoft have any more biscuits at tea from now on, "because he's too fat." Not to mention that Mycroft's favorite CD had gone missing two days ago… "The East Wind knows who's worthy, Sherlock, and it hunts for the ones who aren't…"

It took about ten more minutes before Sherlock was squealing in proper hysterics.

Of course, he'd be back in a matter of days, begging for the same story again. But for tonight he'd reached his limit, and was half-way to peeing himself with terror. Mycroft gave a deep, moaning howl, like the wind itself, and chuckled as the younger boy raced away, looking for Red…

"What are you doing out here?" Father said, rounding the corner of the house.

"Same thing you are, I expect," Mycroft said, standing. "Mummy has the baby pictures out."

"Ah," Father said, smiling. "Had she reached the one of you in the wooly hat?"

"Yes. And explained how stupid I looked in it," Mycroft sighed. "Must she always show that picture and point out that I look an utter prat? I was only three months old, for goodness sake. And she's the one who put the damned thing on me."

"Ah, but it's her alibi," Father said, chuckling. "Why she didn't realize until you were nearly ten that you were a genius." He laughed. "Oh, that day. You, marching us around the house, deducing where Sherlock had crawled to, explaining every step of the way and ruling out the impossible. The monologue on the unlikelihood of Sherlock electrocuting himself on the frayed wire behind the sofa was priceless." Father looked at him, fondly. "She never got over it, you know—that she missed it for so long."

"You knew, though," Mycroft said.

"Well, I knew you were a sight smarter than I was," Father said. "But in this family that's not so difficult."

Mycroft clucked. "You're smart enough," he grumbled. In a world of fat, stupid goldfish, Father, he thought was a perfect, shining angel fish…an exception to all Mycroft's rules.

"I know enough to keep my mouth shut when I may be wrong," Father laughed. "Come on, son. Let's go in and play with the Watson's baby. Your mother shouldn't be the only one in the family to welcome the child, eh?"

Mycroft smiled at his father. "If I do—if I'm nice to her—will you get me a puppy?"

"You're old enough to get your own puppy, Mycroft," Father said, smiling back.

"London's no place for a dog. And Sherlock would probably come steal it and keep it at Baker Street in any case."

"Think about it," Father said, "it's lonely in London."

"Goldfish. Dogs. Everyone seems to think I need a pet," Mycroft said. "I'm not lonely."

Father just smiled. "Come on. Let's go in. It's getting cold, out here."

As they came in, Mummy was saying, "And this is Sherlock with his dog, Redbeard."

"My dog, Mummy," Mycroft said, reflexively.

"The family dog."

"No. My dog."

Mummy frowned. "You outgrew a dog years before Sherlock was old enough to play with Redbeard, Mikey. You were away at uni for most of that time. He was really Sherlock's dog, at the end."

Mycroft, cradling Mary's baby, just smiled. But that night, lying in his narrow childhood bed, he wondered. Which was the final proof of ownership? The digging of the grave—or the making of the headstone?


End file.
